Homemade Lapsteel Demo - Lonesome Whistle

[JoshEdwardsChannel]

Awesome, mine is almost the same as yours, except I made mine red. I'm only 12, so I'm happy enough with mine. Do you tune to an open e?

[csikszentmihalyi]

@JoshEdwardsChannel Yeah either open E (EBEG#BE), open D (DADF#AD) or open G (DGDGBA), depending on the song. I tuned it once to C#m7 (C# G# C# G# B E) for an original song I recorded with the band, that's a cool tuning.

[JoshEdwardsChannel]

@csikszentmihalyi awesome, ive only had mine since i built it in the summer and think ur awesome! i can't play much but 'another one bites the dust', 'smoke on the water' and 'amazing grace'=]

[MaxVatutin]

great sound

[Greystash]

Great work

[waterdog226]

I just stumbled across this...awesomeness! I am learning to play the ukulele, and this just grabs a soul.

[claycephus]

Awesome!! I'm adding this to my favorite list.

[Nittacci]

Beautiful. I'm trying to learn to play lap steel myself. wish I could find a teacher here in Chicago.

[menamestom]

Hi, nice playing there mate. Like many others I'm having a go at building a lap steel myself and wandered what you used for the nut?

Cheers

[csikszentmihalyi]

thanks, dad shaped the nut out of a piece of aluminum bar to match the Les Paul Junior wraparound bridge, not sure how exactly to be honest.

[menamestom]

Ha, good idea, I've got my dad on the case now!

He said he'd make something at work.

You're never too old to get help off your dad,....

Cheers, keep slidin'

[kidzcrewonline]

nice work. we'll have to get you to play on the new album. can you play the trumpet?

[csikszentmihalyi]

no but i play a pretty mean backdoor bugle :)

[8ulls3y3]

Nice, man. Really nice. What a sound!

[Newhomerambler]

Mighty sweet soundin' slider you built. I've never made an electric yet, but hope to give it a try. I learned to slide because I also knew making accurate frets would be tricky. Your first too, impressive.

[csikszentmihalyi]

Thanks very much - I originally had a cheap humbucker stack pickup in there and it was definitely lacking a lot of tone - it's a whole new instrument since I put the dimarzio in.

[AK5204]

great witch tuning you use

[csikszentmihalyi]

I think that was open E (E B E G# B E)

[dhkippj]

not bad I built a 6 string lap steel last year and am about to build a double neck 8 string

[weave58]

I build lap steels also and used his book too. you did a great job on your first lap steel. And the tone control does add to the tonal possiblities.

[DolittleMccoy]

Awesome!!!!

[csikszentmihalyi]

Thanks it's a Dimarzio "fast track 2" which is a humbucker in a single coil package. I used a push pull pot to switch between parallel and series wiring.

Originally I had a squier single coil pickup in there but it was too thin and buzzy. I used Queensland maple and Indian rosewood for the fretboard. There are only 2 cavities, the pickup cavity and the cavity for the pot & jack - in hindsight I should have put a tone control. The effects are courtesy of Guitar Rig 3 through my PC speakers.

[gannibootis]

thanks for the informative reply. I recently helped my son build a guitar. Since then Ive been wanting a new project that wasnt too complicated and I thought since the neck was less fussy than a guitar a lap steel would be simple enough. the problem is I know nothing about lap steels so i appreciate the info.

[csikszentmihalyi]

No worries, it's my first and only guitar building attempt - it was nice not to have to worry about the exact position and height of the frets. I used an ebook called it's esay to build your own lap steel by Martin Koch.

Cheers,

Dan.

[gannibootis]

i love the sound you get I am just now rounding up parts for a lap steel and was wondering what kind of pick ups you used. i see so many different configurations and im leaning towards a pair of humbuckers but yours sounds so nice. Id also like to know what kind of wood and if you routed any extra cavities for sound or just for p/u's and electical stuff

[TsarNick77]

that's awesome. it give me the blue

[Driod48]

i remember seeing u make that lap steel guitar ;) - ur bro